Cognition 203:104342 (2020)
Authors |
|
Abstract |
A key source of support for the view that challenging people’s beliefs about free will may undermine moral behavior is two classic studies by Vohs and Schooler (2008). These authors reported that exposure to certain prompts suggesting that free will is an illusion increased cheating behavior. In the present paper, we report several attempts to replicate this influential and widely cited work. Over a series of five studies (sample sizes of N = 162, N = 283, N = 268, N = 804, N = 982) (four preregistered) we tested the relationship between (1) anti-free-will prompts and free will beliefs and (2) free will beliefs and immoral behavior. Our primary task was to closely replicate the findings from Vohs and Schooler (2008) using the same or highly similar manipulations and measurements as the ones used in their original studies. Our efforts were largely unsuccessful. We suggest that manipulating free will beliefs in a robust way is more difficult than has been implied by prior work, and that the proposed link with immoral behavior may not be as consistent as previous work suggests.
|
Keywords | Free will, skepticism, moral behavior, cheating, replication |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
DOI | 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104342 |
Options |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Download options
References found in this work BETA
Estimating the Reproducibility of Experimental Philosophy.Florian Cova, Brent Strickland, Angela Abatista, Aurélien Allard, James Andow, Mario Attie, James Beebe, Renatas Berniūnas, Jordane Boudesseul, Matteo Colombo, Fiery Cushman, Rodrigo Diaz, Noah N’Djaye Nikolai van Dongen, Vilius Dranseika, Brian D. Earp, Antonio Gaitán Torres, Ivar Hannikainen, José V. Hernández-Conde, Wenjia Hu, François Jaquet, Kareem Khalifa, Hanna Kim, Markus Kneer, Joshua Knobe, Miklos Kurthy, Anthony Lantian, Shen-yi Liao, Edouard Machery, Tania Moerenhout, Christian Mott, Mark Phelan, Jonathan Phillips, Navin Rambharose, Kevin Reuter, Felipe Romero, Paulo Sousa, Jan Sprenger, Emile Thalabard, Kevin Tobia, Hugo Viciana, Daniel Wilkenfeld & Xiang Zhou - 2018 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology (1):1-36.
Replication, Falsification, and the Crisis of Confidence in Social Psychology.Brian D. Earp & David Trafimow - 2015 - Frontiers in Psychology 6.
Free Will in Everyday Life: Autobiographical Accounts of Free and Unfree Actions.Tyler F. Stillman, Roy F. Baumeister & Alfred R. Mele - 2011 - Philosophical Psychology 24 (3):381 - 394.
Personal Philosophy and Personnel Achievement: Belief in Free Will Predicts Better Job Performance.Tyler F. Stillman, Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs, Nathaniel M. Lambert, Frank D. Fincham & Lauren E. Brewer - 2010 - .
This Isn’T the Free Will Worth Looking For: General Free Will Beliefs Do Not Influence Moral Judgments, Agent-Specific Choice Ascriptions Do.Andrew E. Monroe, Garrett L. Brady & Bertram F. Malle - 2016 - Social Psychological and Personality Science 8 (2):191-199.
View all 12 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
The Fourfold Route to Empirical Enlightenment: Experimental Philosophy’s Adolescence and the Changing Body of Work.Robert Barnard, Joseph Ulatowski & Jonathan M. Weinberg - 2021 - Filozofia Nauki 29 (2):77-113.
Similar books and articles
(Un)Just Deserts: The Dark Side of Moral Responsibility.Gregg D. Caruso - 2014 - Southwest Philosophy Review 30 (1):27-38.
This Isn’T the Free Will Worth Looking For: General Free Will Beliefs Do Not Influence Moral Judgments, Agent-Specific Choice Ascriptions Do.Andrew E. Monroe, Garrett L. Brady & Bertram F. Malle - 2016 - Social Psychological and Personality Science 8 (2):191-199.
Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will.John Baer, James C. Kaufman & Roy F. Baumeister (eds.) - 2008 - Oxford University Press.
The “Epidemic” of Cheating Depends on Its Definition: A Critique of Inferring the Moral Quality of “Cheating in Any Form”.Bradford Barnhardt - 2016 - Ethics and Behavior 26 (4):330-343.
Academic Cheating in Mathematics Classes: A Motivational Perspective.Nina Pavlin-Bernardić, Daria Rovan & Jurana Pavlović - 2017 - Ethics and Behavior 27 (6):486-501.
Free Will Beliefs Predict Attitudes Toward Unethical Behavior and Criminal Punishment.Nathan D. Martin, Davide Rigoni & Kathleen D. Vohs - 2017 - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (28):7325-7330.
Forget the Folk: Moral Responsibility Preservation Motives and Other Conditions for Compatibilism.Cory J. Clark, Bo M. Winegard & Roy F. Baumeister - 2019 - Frontiers in Psychology 10.
Free Will Beliefs Are Better Predicted by Dualism Than Determinism Beliefs Across Different Cultures.David Wisniewski, Robert Deutschländer & John-Dylan Haynes - 2019 - PLoS ONE 14 (9).
Academic Cheating in Disliked Classes.Eric M. Anderman & Sungjun Won - 2019 - Ethics and Behavior 29 (1):1-22.
Believing Versus Disbelieving in Free Will: Correlates and Consequences.Roy Baumeister - 2012 - Personality and Social Psychology Compass 6 (10):736-745.
Scientific Challenges to Free Will and Moral Responsibility.Joshua Shepherd - 2015 - Philosophy Compass 10 (3):197-207.
The Effects of Instructor Fear Appeals and Moral Appeals on Cheating-Related Attitudes and Behavior of University Students.Jennifer Akeley Spear & Ann Neville Miller - 2012 - Ethics and Behavior 22 (3):196 - 207.
The Nature, Common Usage, and Implications of Free Will and Determinism.Shirley Matile Ogletree & Crystal D. Oberle - 2008 - Behavior and Philosophy 36:97 - 111.
A Critical Review of Methodologies and Results in Recent Research on Belief in Free Will.Esthelle Ewusi-Boisvert & Eric Racine - 2018 - Neuroethics 11 (1):97-110.
Analytics
Added to PP index
2020-06-08
Total views
173 ( #66,886 of 2,499,073 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
41 ( #20,967 of 2,499,073 )
2020-06-08
Total views
173 ( #66,886 of 2,499,073 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
41 ( #20,967 of 2,499,073 )
How can I increase my downloads?
Downloads